WordPress URL doing_wp_cron Removal

Why does ?doing_wp_cron=*** show in my WordPress URL?

There are a number of plugins and themes that append this to your URL.

I believe it is typically used to perform a background process (like scheduled posts). Wordpress redirects to the URL with ?doing_wp_cron appended.

One such plugin, BackupBuddy, uses this to schedule tasks as a part of the backup procedure.

I don’t pretend to completely understand why it appends when visitors hit the site but it has something to do with the host or server having loopbacks disabled. There are other plugins and themes as I understand that do the same thing. Essentially it is trying to run a cron without actually running a cron.

In my situation the host has loopbacks disabled and are not willing to enable them. Many hosting providers will probably say the same thing unless you run your own un-managed VPS or have root access etc.

How can I remove ?doing_wp_cron from my WordPress URL?

For backup buddy you can remove the ALTERNATE_WP_CRON line or disable *change value to false. Likewise you can completely disable this altogether.

Open wp-config.php to make your adjustments.

BackupBuddy:

/** BackupBuddy Alternate Cron */
define ('ALTERNATE_WP_CRON', true);

Disable Altogether:

/** Disable Cron */
define('DISABLE_CRON', true);

Now my plugin / theme is not working as expected – it’s broken…

Perhaps it is required to have this cron working in the background. If your host does not allow loopbacks then you should setup a custom cron. There are a lot of resources online – google search it out.

I was able to completely disable the cron using the second method above without breaking BackupBuddy.

Here are some resources that helped with doing_wp_cron…

Why is ?doing_wp_cron being appended to my URLsStackExchange WordPress Answers